Sunday, September 6, 2020

Hello From the Great Dystopia

It's almost three years since I last posted.  It has been almost that long since I last played D&D.  Part of the reason is the lockdown, but also the two couples that were my core players recently had babies.  They are occupied with that cool adventure right now, otherwise I think I would have tried starting back up virtually.

I'm feeling pretty socially isolated and just wonder if there are any folks from the DIY gaming community still out there gaming and posting.  If so, I'm curious to here what platforms you are using to game and how it's going.  I'd also be interested if anyone has a good list of creative gamers still blogging (I never kept a blog roll). 

Anyway, I hope you are well and finding some joy in creating and gaming with others.

28 comments:

  1. Great to see you blogging again!

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  2. It's shocking how time flies and how unaware I am of it. I'm very glad you're back. I've been using Zoom, and my group has been very happy with it. I must reopen the room every 40 minutes and re-invite everyone because I'm not a subscriber, but it's easy. Once I pay for a subscription, our meetings won't have time limits. So far, Zoom has been my favorite online gaming experience, and it no longer gives me apprehension.

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  3. MeWe looked pretty vibrant after G+ fell, but now there isn't much going on from what I gather. The OSR Discord seems to be going pretty well, and so does Reddit (r/osr). Blogs in general are having a resurgence with a lot of newcomers, too.

    I can recommend my own blogroll or Anne's at https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/ - also, there's the Old School RPG Planet at https://campaignwiki.org/osr/ (lot of overlapping, mind you).

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  4. Glad to see you, my friend. I am still plugging away at destination unknown. For the past few months my posts have been wallowing in the apocalypse. Grognardia is back and now you. Things are gooder!

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  5. I've been running / playing in sessions of Mothership (Tuesday Knight Games) and Knave (Questing Beast), using Roll20 and Google Meets. A lot of folks are using Zoom or Discord or whatever to run more "theatre of mind" style games. Discord is super active for discussion. The Glatisant newsletter (https://questingbeast.substack.com/) has been useful for me to keep up with interesting new stuff.

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  6. Hello there!

    I'm currently playing in two games and running one. Call of Cthulhu is over Roll20, while an AD&D 1E game running through Slave Lords is in person. I'm running Stonehell using White Box FMAG and Delving Deeper with that same in-person group. The AD&D DM is planning on running Savage World of Solomon Kane for a while when we finish up the current section of Slave Lords. I want to run something using GURPS, but am still deciding what, exactly, and on which platform. I'm also pretty interested in running RuneQuest: Glorantha sometime, again not sure on which platform.

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  7. Thanks, folks. It's nice to hear from all of you.

    I'm tempted to invite folks to some one-off dungeon crawls in Zoom. I only hesitate because I spend so much time in Zoom for my job already.

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    1. I teach first grade and during zoom school a kid was pretending his pencils were arrows. He was dying a slow and very expressive death with gouts of blood. I just stopped teaching and laughed. That kid is my spirit animal.

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    2. Man, it's good to hear from you, you were here from the beginning. One of my players has to work with kindergartners over zoom and she has to pretend to at toys to keep their attention. I'm dealing with college students, I usually tell them I've been asked to share my secrets as an Instagram content creator and they chuckle.

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  8. Glad to have you back! And I'm glad I kept you in my blog roll for three years, lol!

    I'm still gaming and posting! After playing lots of 5e for a couple of years, I'm back to simpler systems, currently trying to write my "minimalist" version of D&D.

    (the motto "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." is great, BTW)

    Currently, playing with friends over Zoom and Discord.

    Anyway.
    http://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/

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    1. Thanks! Yeah, I see the draw of the ornate, baroque, maximalist, but I find, for myself, that the simpler each system is the more systems I can incorporate.

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  9. Hey, Telecanter! You wrote some of my favorite RPG material - you have a really cool and unique mind. Very glad to see you back - I was beginning to wonder if you'd had to call blogging quits forever. I think Ynas Midgard and Faoladh and the others above have got you covered on their blogs' blogrolls, but you can look at zrzavy dot blogspot dot com for any that I have and they don't.

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    1. Thanks, so much, I appreciate that. I enjoy doing it because it gives me something to think about other than work throughout the day, and then I like the thought some people might use an idea in their own game, but I especially like the back and forth of ideas in the comments too.

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  10. So great to see a post from you again!

    Lots of the same bloggers are active now, although maybe not posting as actively.

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    1. Thanks! I hope you'll find some posts interesting.

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  11. Welcome back! I've struggled with my own comings and goings for quite a while now, and finally accepted that they are what they are (often a reflection of disorder & instability in my outer life). Don't sweat it. I'm certainly feeling the urge again.

    I haven't played in a while, so no help there. The OSR feels...more stable now, to me. More settled. I think it's a testament to 5e as much as anything. Less to rebel against, no 6e looming.

    I've lost the thread of this. Welcome back!

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  12. Hey, thanks. I'm happy that my blog still exists and people could see I started posting again. The relationship between the community and current edition that you mention is interesting. I feel like a lot of folks wanted a reformed system while my entrance to the OSR was all about the sense of joy I felt at escaping the confusing mass of 1E rules I grew up with. If you ask me what system I use when I play now, I have to stop and think of what chart, monster, or treasure I use that I didn't make myself (or copy from another blogger).

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  13. Welcome back sir, glad to see you posting again and I look forward to seeing what fantastical creations you dream up.

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  14. Very glad to see you back. I've been getting back into posting again myself.

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  15. Thanks so much! Glad to see both of you.

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  16. Woot, so good to see your name pop up on my blogroll after this time. Looking forward to seeing more.

    Still scratching out something now and then when my mental bandwidth allows.

    Playing online with a couple of the louts who posted above, as well as a couple other games, both regular and pick-up.

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  17. I wondered what happened to you! I discovered your blog and gradually read it from beginning to end. Glad to see you're back!

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  18. Telecanter! Your blog is one of the best, I'm so glad you're back. I haven't posted at my blog http://builtbygodslongforgotten.blogspot.com for some time but I've been gaming on average once a week on roll20 for years. It is weird now to work on the computer all day then get on it again at night but playing a little dnd just gives my brain a little active break.

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  19. Hello! I just found your blog, via Cyclpeatron, which I just found yesterday. I've been plying minis exclusively for a long time, just getting back into the RPG scene.

    I've recently started a Low Fantasy Gaming campaign, in a homebrew setting, having fun playing on Discord Voice.

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  20. @Lum: Thanks so much. I'm glad you are able to game. I'll try to keep posting interesting stuff to keep the DIY-community-sharing vibe alive.

    @Stephen: Welcome aboard! Happy you are able to game. Hope you find some interesting ideas in my posts.

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  21. Gotta add to the general hello! Yours was the first blog I'd read in the OSR. As someone above posted, I read it start to finish.

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    1. Cool! I hope you are having fun gaming and making stuff.

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